All LR 4.n does with video is add metadata, trim clips and allow some very basic colour correction.Simple cataloguing of clips when ingested as part of a mixed media shoot is about as useful as it gets. As soon as you joining clips together for a project you'll need a proper editing package.

Can someone explain to me (as a mc user) if this SW is soemthing I should look at

I edit fine on FCP but dont like tripping in to Color - and think Colour is backwards !

Id like an editor like FCP and do my colour in a Lightroom style interface..

Best

SamMM

It's difficult to answer if Lightworks would suits your needs.

I've started to "play with it" but could not go very deep because I have a lot of work at this moment and can't focus on a new learning curve. My first impression is that it's very good* indeed and incredibly flexible and fast. But it's nothing like a fcp or adobe interface and at first it's a little disconcerting. You'd have to change your habits.

*by very good I mean that it's one of those tools you know it's going to be dead efficient.

It seems to me that, as expressed in this forum about this software, that this is a NLE that takes its source from cine and not from video. It has been praised in the past for being the fastest editor in the right hands. Very skilled, high-end editors are using it and if you look at the films that have-are been edited with it, you'll see that this isn't a toy software by any means. They use it basically in the high-end cine prods.

The files management and in general, the organization of the workflow-palettes seemed to me above any other NLE I've been working with, included Avid but that is of course a first sensation. I haven't spent enough time on it. Also I've noticed that the memory management is exemplary. But I also smelled that you need to have experience in editing to really appreciate the goodies. For a casual user it could be a little "too different" from what we already know. It requires experience because if it's easy to be organized the way you work, it's also easy to end in a complete mess.

If it deserves a serious look? I certainly think so.

Ps: about colour grading in a sort of Lightroom interface, I have a Nuke unit and it's the case. I won't upgrade the Nuke software any further because I'm not going to keep going compositing. Lightworks seems to be a mixed bag between video-stills interface but the blueish application background isn't neutral when it comes to grading and I think it's distracting.

Morgan, I'd take a look at daVinci Resolve version 9 which is due out later this year.

Version 8 is extremely powerful but lacks a few "one man band" friendly features like audio passthrough (so your output clips have no sound, even if the input clips did- not a problem for high end productions where sound is finished by a separate expert, but annoying if you are also your own sound editor).

Version 9 adds that and a bunch more promised features, including a revamped interface. (It is already better than Color for me). It should be available in a Free version like v.8 whose main limit for us is max output resolution is 1920 x 1080.

I edit fine on FCP but dont like tripping in to Color - and think Colour is backwards !

Id like an editor like FCP and do my colour in a Lightroom style interface..

It partly depends on price point.

Lightroom is still very basic. But Adobe has all of the tools available to enable the same functionality as Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects, Media Encoder, etc. in Lightroom at $99. If they really want to compete at that price point, it could be killer. Big TBD for future releases and how quickly they appear.

I would assume they might be afraid of undercutting their other, more expensive, aps? Depends on how much the market pushes them to perform (can you say - Canon?)

Next up is Photoshop CS 6.0 Standard and whatever they call Extended now. Premium? See Billy's thread in this forum for some preliminary info.

Finally, if you can pop for Adobe CS 6.0 Production Premium, you get it all - Photoshop, Premiere Pro, After Effects, Media Encoder, Speed Grade (which they recentlty acquired and will likely intergrate more thouroughly in 6.xx releases - hopefully to Photoshop, etc. too - maybe Lightroom?

Production Premium is a huge, new suite with a new interface that looks like it will be kick ass. The cheapest direct purchase is educational, at $429 (or less.) You can later upgrade that to a full, commercial liscense at the CS 6.5 or CS 7.0 release, via a normal upgrade (about $399 this go round.)

It has interfaces to mimic Final Cut Pro, Avid, etc. It can import existing projects from them and export projects to them. It looks like Adobe is making a serious play in that market.

You might be able to upgrade from suites as old as CS 2, if you buy CS 5.5 before May 6, and then get your free (automatic) upgrade to CS 6.0. After May 6 you can no longer upgrade from CS 2, but you can upgrade CS 3, 4, 5, and 5.5 directly to 6.0 (Either from a suite, or from some stand-alone products.)

So you have basically 3 new tools from Adobe, at price points from $99 (for Lightroom 4.0 at B&H with a camera or lens purchase, or at Adobe with other software), to whatever a Photoshop upgrade costs you - maybe $200 to $399 - to $429 to $1,699 for Production Premium.

Those use 3 different editing paradigms, although all 3 are non-destructive (which seems to be where everyone is going.)

There is:

1) The Lightroom interface,

2) A traditional Layers and Filters approach in Photoshop, applied to video, and

3) Primiere Pro, with a non-destructive, meta-data based approach, with no transcoding, to a more traditional NLE color grading & effects toolset with several stand-alone componenmts (After Effects, PhotoShop) Those can now exchange edits almost completely without rendering or "outputting," and baking in edits, when going from one tool to the next (via enhanced "smart object"-type links. Dynamic links? )

There is a lot to learn. It is hard to even figure out pricing and hardware architectures/requirements for each (Mercury engine, GPU, Cuda cores, RAM, HDD's).

I will have all 3 with the 6.0 release. I plan on spending the next 2 months doing a deep dive into each, with the real focus on Production Premium (Premiere, et. al.) I am obviously making a big commitment to that platform and so will be bised in that direction. But there are many other tools out there, new and old, low end and high end.

Billy and I have been exploring a bit and learning as we go. Lightroom is just too basic for much real work yet. I hope that Adobe enables all of their other tools through the LR interface soon, in release 4.1, 4.2, etc. (after the CS 6.0 launch.) It could be steller.

Photoshop looks pretty robust for those familiar with that workflow. There is a link in Billy's thread to a 7 minute video on PS 6.0 (available until May 6 as a free Beta, then as a 30 day trial.)

Good luck! We have been chatting and trying to learn day-by-day as these tools start to come out. Glad to have many others opinions in the mix!

I've promissed I'll post an extensive evaluation on this great editor in this forum,

But I finally won't.

The reasons that motivated this shift, to be short, is something we are unfortunatly seeing more and more in the industry: the release of unfinished products that need serious enhancements to be fully operative, but are sold under the name of "pro" and suposdly stable. We can think for example of FCPx just to ilustrate one of the recent famous'.

They (LW) launched their pro software under a great ww expectation, and the same day I realised that it was full of bugs, unstable and had legal issues (limitations) with some important codecs. Yes I'm aware of the team efforts, I'm aware of the legal complications involved and all the possible difficulties they had to deal with for bringing their software ready on time, but if it's not ready, it's not ready.

Competition is tough and there are many NLEs now on the market, suceptible to fullfill the most demanding pros. Something that's not ready in 2012 is a commercial suicide. They launched what is probably the best NLE in terms of arquitecture and interface and nobody care. Look in the Cow, in any big video forum and you'll find very little echos. I said it, the software is incredibly good, but this #11 release isn't stable enough and lacks important features you find without problem in almost all the recent editors from the competition.

I've been in contact with the Team up to the top, and I must say that these people are wonderfull, helpfull and they'd deserve the success. But they need to, keeping their spěrit and differences from the competition, being at least as operative and hassle-free. And today, as I'm writing, it is not hassle/bug-free.

If they work hard (and I'm sure they do) on fixing the bugs and solved the legal codecs issues, bring some of the promissed features, I'll reconsider my position because the software is worth.But today, as it, I don't bite.